


The Adjutant

by athena_crikey



Category: Hogan's Heroes
Genre: Drama, Gen, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 10:19:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14162682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: In the middle of the dirt compound stood Weiss and Klink, the captain holding the colonel tight against him with his left arm, as if embracing him. His right hand held his service pistol, aimed straight at Klink’s temple.No one had predicted a new adjutant would end up like this.





	The Adjutant

His hands were the only part of him that was warm, and he didn’t want to think about that.

All around Newkirk, men were sitting or crouching on the ground, some alone, some in pairs or small groups. No one moved, no one spoke. Here and there a guard stood, just as frozen as them. A child’s toy city filled with tin men. 

Off to his left, the colonel was sitting on the ground with Kinch and LeBeau kneeling on either side, ineffective guard dogs. The colonel was hunched forwards, both hands clenched tight around his left thigh; red was still seeping through his fingers. They were as red as Newkirk’s own hands, pressed hard against Carter’s shoulder. The American was lying on his back on the frozen ground, head and shoulders resting in Newkirk’s lap as the corporal tried to staunch the blood flow with shaking hands. Carter was both alive and breathing clearly, which Newkirk knew must mean the bullet had missed the major vessels and his lungs, but he was pale and shivering and his eyes were losing their focus even as he stared at the centre of the camp’s attention along with everyone else. 

In the middle of the dirt compound stood Weiss and Klink, the captain holding the colonel tight against him with his left arm, as if embracing him. His right hand held his service pistol, aimed straight at Klink’s temple.

No one had predicted a new adjutant would end up like this.

\-------------------------------------------

_9 days previous_

The colonel’s office, without a heater of its own, was cold enough to merit gloves even in the early spring. Newkirk, who preferred manoeuvrability to warmth, tucked his hands under his arms while he listened to the coffeepot. 

“But I don’t need an adjutant – General Burkhalter is well aware of that! The past two he sent me proved to be utterly useless and unnecessary, no offence to yourself, Captain Weiss.” Klink was in full whine, mowing right over civility and then backtracking as necessary. Around Newkirk the men listened with varying degrees of interest; Hogan and Kinch were both watching the coffeepot intently, while LeBeau stared at the floor and Carter picked at his cat’s cradle. 

“No sir. Nevertheless, I have been assigned as your aid. The general will confirm it. You have my orders, sir.”

“Yes, yes.” Klink sighed. “Very well, you will take up your duties immediately. See Sergeant Schultz; he holds the duty roster. He can show you where you’ll bunk.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.” Klink spoke glumly, fabric hardly whispering as he presumably saluted; the captain clicked his heels together and marched out in a curt stride. Hogan leant forward and pulled the plug on the pot.

“Well, well. A new adjutant. Wonder who’s marrying into the family this time.” He tossed the wire aside and stood. “Kinch, you’d better put the word out. Everyone’s to keep a low profile until we get a handle on this guy. Keep everyone out of the tunnels until further notice. We don’t have anything top priority going on this week, do we?”

“Not from London, sir.”

“Forgery’s slow, sir,” put in Newkirk.

“Not from me,” said Carter, shrugging and trying unsuccessfully to switch from one stage of the string game to the next with only one pair of hands. 

“Right. Then I guess I’d better go ply Klink for information.”

\----------------------------------------------

They plied Klink. Then Schultz. Then Langenscheidt. All of which produced absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, Captain Weiss implemented daily barracks searches and nightly bed checks and set up a system of roving patrols to run without apparent schedule.

“Weiss’s definitely looking for something, colonel,” said Kinch, staring at his cards. Newkirk nodded, along with LeBeau and Carter, and dealt the sergeant another card. 

“’E’s got the wind up right enough, guv’nor.” He took another card for himself, ten of clubs, and frowned as he slid it into his hand. 

Hogan, pacing at the end of the table with a mug of coffee, stopped to stare down at the table. “He’s got some idea all right, but what? Klink sure doesn’t know, and odds are Burkhalter doesn’t either. Whose orders is he acting under? You said they were signed by Burkhalter, Newkirk?”

Newkirk, who had broken them out of the safe two days ago for a peek, nodded. “That’s right sir, plain as plain. No doubt about it.”

The colonel resumed his pacing. “Until we know what he’s after, the tunnels’ll have to stay off limits. Kinch, go down tonight right after the bed check and signal London and the Underground. Tell them we’re temporarily out of the game.”

“Yes, sir.”

\----------------------------------------------

It became increasingly clear that whatever Weiss was looking for, he suspected Klink of hiding it just as much as his prisoners. His conversations with the colonel, overhead in Hogan’s office, were curt and suspicious; his attitude towards his superior was unimpressed. And the men sent in to clean Klink’s office and quarters twice caught him in the middle of searching them.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was a Gestapo spy sent here to dig up information on Klink,” said LeBeau over evening coffee, while Newkirk wrote a letter home and Carter and Kinch discussed shipment requests to be put through to London when they had radio access again. 

“No spy’d waste ‘is time on old Klink; might as well spy on mould,” dismissed Newkirk without looking up, sighing when the badly-sharpened pencil ripped into the thin paper over his complaints about the camp’s food. He rolled his eyes but went on; it hadn’t been anything novel anyway. He mostly put it in out of habit these days; unable to write about his true activities, he was hard pressed to write letters which interested even him.

“True enough,” said the colonel, sitting at the end of the table with his back close to the stove’s warmth. There was still frost on the ground every morning, the earth always hard and dark under their boots, and the poorly-built barracks provided little insulation. “I’d think he’d been assigned by someone doing a background check on Klink, only he’s had plenty of those already and why would anyone bother in the first place?” Hogan shook his head. “I just can’t make it out, unless they suspect Klink of running our operation.”

“Not even the Boche could be that stupid,” said LeBeau with finality. 

“Well whatever it is, I wish ‘e’d either find it or give up already. We’re gonna ‘ave to get ‘im transferred if this keeps up, colonel. D’you realise I ‘aven’t done anything worth writing about in a week?” The pencil sliced into the paper again, and Newkirk put it down in disgust. 

LeBeau glanced at the abandoned letter. “You never write anything exciting anyway.”

“At least when I write them I can _think_ about all the interesting things I could be writin’ about. Now it’s just cabbage, callisthenics and …what’s something else that starts with c?” Newkirk frowned.

“Checks,” supplied LeBeau absently, sipping at his coffee.

“Right, bloody bed checks. Who wants to ‘ear about that?”

“Yeah, well, as soon as you think up a solution, you let me know,” said the colonel, draining his mug and then wandering off towards his quarters. Newkirk sighed, and went back to finishing his letter.

The next day they got their excitement. Newkirk had never regretted anything more.

\-------------------------------------------

The noon roll call had just broken up, the men breaking apart to take up their separate tasks and hobbies, some assigned to work groups or cleaning teams, others to callisthenics. The colonel, Kinch and LeBeau were heading over to the rec hall to start organizing the monthly Entertainment, probably dancing with the weather still too cold in the unheated hall for sitting through a performance. Newkirk and Carter, with free time until their own cleaning assignment in an hour, were returning to the barracks.

They didn’t particularly notice Weiss standing beside Klink in the middle of the compound, speaking intently with the Kommandant as they turned away. 

They definitely didn’t notice him pulling his pistol.

The only hint Newkirk had that something was seriously wrong was the shots breaking out through the camp. Newkirk spun even while he ducked as the first crack echoed from behind him, Carter beside him doing the same. He was in time to see Weiss grabbing Klink around the shoulders and sweeping his pistol around as he turned, firing indiscriminately into the gathered prisoners. He had hardly had time to take the bare facts in, wasn’t even all the way down to the ground, when Carter slammed back into him with a shout. The American’s weight took him the rest of the way down, leaving him kneeling on the cold ground and dragging Carter back towards the barracks. Carter was panting fast through his teeth and keening high in his throat, right hand pressed tight against his chest just below his left shoulder. 

Weiss finished his sweep of the camp and ended up with the barrel of his pistol resting against Klink’s temple. “Tell your guards to drop their guns; the men in the towers are to step away from their machine guns. Tell them!” Weiss was bellowing in German at the top of his lungs, turning left and right to stare at the guards approaching from both sides. Schultz was standing a few yards to the left with his rifle held in an unprepared grip.

“T-throw down your guns,” stammered Klink, shaking in Weiss’ grip. “Throw them down! No one shoot! That is an order!”

The guards slowly lowered their guns and then straightened, watching silently. The prisoners, ducked low or kneeling on the ground, remained still. Newkirk wrapped his arms around Carter to press his hands down over Carter’s; the man sat down abruptly, leaning back against him and still breathing hard. Newkirk stared over his shoulder at Weiss; the captain was red-faced with fury.

“Everyone stays where they are; don’t move or I will shoot the Kommandant!” He shouted, repeating his orders in German and English. Newkirk gritted his teeth together and glanced around. To his right, the colonel was on the ground with his hands pressed tight to his leg; Kinch and LeBeau were crouched near him. To his left a man in a British uniform was lying with Olson and Williams by him, blocking Newkirk’s view of his face. Williams had pulled a large handkerchief from somewhere to press against the man’s stomach; it was startlingly crimson against the blue serge. 

Carter slumped down against him, losing some of his tension and slipping away to lie more than sit. Newkirk shifted to help him until he was mostly lying with his head and shoulders resting in Newkirk’s lap, the corporal figuring that the lower his head was, the less his heart would have to pump. Newkirk shivered, and felt Carter do the same.

His hands were the only part of him that were warm. 

“Sir,” spoke up Olson from the left. “Galbraith needs medical attention. Let us take him to the infirmary, please sir.”

Newkirk opened his mouth to echo the request, but got no further.

“Silence! You will have your medical attention when I have my answers!”

“You can have anything you want,” said Klink, trembling. “J-just tell me what it is.”

“I want to know where it is!” shouted Weiss, turning Klink as he looked around at the men crouched in front of him. “Where are you hiding it?”

“H-hiding what?”

“Your equipment! Your radios, your uniforms, all the tools of your efficient little sabotage unit!”

Newkirk felt his stomach turn. Carter stiffened against him, glancing up at him with narrowed eyes. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” moaned Klink.

“Silence! I have had enough of your denials! I have studied this area for two years – _two years!_ Studied the sabotage, the mysterious disappearances, the information leaks. It is all centred around this camp, _all of it!_ You and these men are running the largest sabotage ring in this state, and I want to know _where. it. is!_ ” He ground the pistol against Klink’s skull, the Kommandant shaking hard.

“I assure you –” began Klink weakly.

“Let me assure _you_ , colonel, if someone does not begin talking soon _you_ will suffer for it.”

“I – I – I –”

“Or perhaps _you_ would like to tell me, Colonel Hogan? It is very plain that the two of you must be in this together.” Weiss turned to the colonel, sitting with his jaw clenched tight. While Weiss had been talking Kinch had pulled off his belt and re-done it tightly around his CO’s thigh, but Newkirk doubted that had done anything for the pain. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” bit out the colonel curtly. “And besides, it seems like your superiors don’t, either. General Burkhalter has never suspected the colonel of sabotage.”

“That’s right,” put in Klink immediately. “I have never been a suspect – ask the general, he will tell you –”

“I don’t care what your general – what _any_ of the generals say. In Intelligence I monitored this state for _two years_ , I warned them all, warned them continuously and they _never listened_. And what has happened? Bridges bombed, factories destroyed, vital information leaked to the Allies, and they all run about like headless chickens wondering who is to blame. Refusing to listen when I tell them that _I know who is to blame!_ ” Weiss was screaming, now, voice nearly breaking with his rage.

Carter shook, hand twitching under Newkirk’s. “’S cold,” he whispered, teeth chattering. Newkirk shuffled to pull him closer, trying to raise him up off the frozen ground.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you inside soon,” he murmured, bending low and shifting his hands to press them more firmly against Carter. There didn’t seem to be that much blood, but the sheepskin of Carter’s jacket was probably capable of soaking up a fair amount.

“You! What are you whispering about!” Weiss swivelled to stare at them, eyes bright and furious.

“’E’s cold, sir. If you’d let me take ‘im in to the infirmary, I’d come straight back, on my word of ‘onour.” Newkirk nodded to the infirmary hutch across the compound.

“Tell me where your operation, your radio, your tunnels are and I will. You show me the tunnels, corporal, and your friend gets his medical attention.”

“Tunnels,” murmured Carter, staring dully at the sky. Newkirk jogged him lightly. 

“Yes, tunnels,” said Weiss cajolingly, dragging Klink over in a stumbling gait. “Where are the tunnels, Sergeant?”

“Not…tunnels,” moaned Carter. His face was alarmingly white.

“He’s delirious, captain,” snapped Hogan. “Blood loss. We all dream about tunnels.”

Weiss ignored him, didn’t look away from Carter, and him. “You. Get him up on his feet.”

“’E’s been bloody shot!” protested Newkirk, half way between fury and incredulity.

“Yes, and if he doesn’t get up, he will be again!” Weiss shook Klink and twisted the pistol in clear threat, without taking the muzzle away from the Kommandant’s head.

“Do as he says,” pleaded Klink through his teeth in a sing-song tone, pale and terrified.

Newkirk glared at the man furiously, lips upturning to show his teeth in a long-buried primeval reaction to threats. Nevertheless, he secured his hold on Carter and raised the man into a sitting position. “C’mon, Andrew, we’re going for a short walk. Think you can get up?”

Carter made no answer.

“You need to show me the tunnels, Sergeant,” wheedled Weiss.

“Tunnel,” echoed Carter thinly, head lolling back against Newkirk’s shoulder.

“Yes, the tunnel. Where is it? In your barracks?”

Carter shifted, beginning to glance towards the barracks door. Newkirk, teeth gritted so tight his skull was aching, twisted his hand inward to drive his knuckles hard into Carter’s wound without much appearance of movement. The American whimpered and fell limp, dropping back against Newkirk. He caught the slumping American easily and sat down under his weight again.

“Where? Where are they?!” demanded Weiss.

“Sorry, sir, ‘e’s fainted,” spat out Newkirk, voice full of broken glass. Weiss snarled and spun back around, pulling Klink with him. 

“Then I will search this camp from bottom to top, again, until one of you shows me your operation!” He began dragging Klink towards the Kommandantur, but stopped half way. “You, Hogan. You come too.”

“Sorry, I’m a bit tied up,” returned the colonel harshly, glowering at the man from his knees, hands still clamped around his thigh.

Weiss pressed the gun further into Klink’s temple, turned it. “You come too,” he repeated deliberately. Klink stared wordlessly, arms stiff as steel poles by his sides.

The colonel glanced at Kinch, who nodded and helped him to stand. With one arm slung over his XO’s shoulder, the colonel limped over towards Weiss and Klink. Weiss nodded. “Right. The rest of you stay as you are; for each man who has moved when I return, I will kill two.” He pulled Klink the rest of the way into the Kommandantur, kicking the door open and leaving it so.

He had hardly disappeared when the door to the infirmary hut opened and someone tossed something out. Newkirk, glancing over and recognized Field, the medic. The nearest man to the infirmary was holding a small white bag; he glanced at it and then tossed it on towards Newkirk. It took four passes for the bag to make it to Newkirk who opened it to find it filled with gauze patches. He pulled out a few, and then threw it on towards Olson. He began unzipping Carter’s jacket and then paused, looking up at Field in the door of the infirmary hut. 

Someone had to do something. And right now the colonel and Kinch might as well be out of the mission for all the freedom to act that they had. He looked over to LeBeau, crouched beside the space Hogan had occupied, staring at him. Newkirk glanced at the Kommandantur; the windows were closed and frosted over. He jerked his head.

LeBeau was kneeling beside him in seconds, looking down at Carter with his face twisted in an expression of fury while Newkirk hurriedly unzipped the now-stained flight suit below the bomber jacket. “Tell Field to get down into the tunnel and get a gun. I’ll get Weiss into the infirmary hut; the rest’ll be up to him.”

“You want to shoot him?”

“You have a better idea? The man’s mad; ‘e’ll kill Klink and the colonel, and Carter and Galbraith, before ‘e lets anyone go. We can risk Klink, or we can risk ‘him and the other three.”

LeBeau frowned, but nodded. “Alright. But –” He shook his head and took off without another word, sprinting across the compound ducked low. He disappeared into the infirmary hut for a moment, then reappeared and scrambled back to his place. Newkirk wondered how many of the tower guards had dashed down to report the hostage-taking, what kind of armed force was already being gathered ready to storm in. The last thing they needed was a troop of guards breaking into the camp and shooting things up. Especially with already wounded men; the situation was going to be hard enough to control as it was. He looked down at Carter, lying with his head at a crooked angle and breathing shallowly. “Sorry, mate,” he whispered.

There was a creak from across the compound and Hogan and Kinch emerged from the darkness of the Kommandantur, Hogan leaning hard on his XO and looking very white. His pants leg was, Newkirk saw with a twisting heart, stained down to the knee. He set his teeth, and waited.

Weiss and Klink came out next, Weiss directing Hogan towards barracks 2. Closer-to, Newkirk could see the sweat beading along the colonel’s hair line, see him trembling with each step. 

Enough. Goddamn enough.

“Sir,” he said, straightening and staring past the startled Hogan and Kinch to Weiss. “I’ll tell you, sir. I’ll tell you where the tunnel is.”

Weiss stopped, staring suspiciously at Newkirk. “Will you?” he said, flatly.

“Yes, sir. If you agree to allow the injured men to be taken to the infirmary.”

“Newkirk,” began Hogan, but Weiss cut him off.

“Of course, corporal. As soon as you show me –”

“No deal. ‘Ow do I know you’ll keep your end once you get what you want? You let me take ‘em to the infirmary, _then_ I show you. What d’you ‘ave to lose? If I don’t, you can always shoot the Kommandant and then go back for them,” he said, sourly.

Weiss considered, glancing down at Carter, and then across at Galbraith, and finally nodding. “Very well. You may take them to the infirmary.”

“The colonel too,” said Newkirk, immediately.

Weiss frowned, but shrugged. “Alright. Just get moving.” He nodded in the direction of the infirmary. Olson and Williams immediately gathered Galbraith up between them and started carrying him over to the infirmary.

“LeBeau, give us a ‘and, will you?” Newkirk wrapped his arms more firmly around Carter’s chest and waited for LeBeau to hurry over and take the man’s legs. They picked him up together and headed for the infirmary, LeBeau staring hard at Newkirk from beneath his brows. Behind them, Newkirk could hear the colonel staggering along with Kinch. He raised an eyebrow and jerked his head back in silent signal: _Is he following?_ LeBeau nodded once.

Good, thought Newkirk, and didn’t regret it.

\-------------------------------------------------

They reached the infirmary after walking for what seemed like a mile; he had been conscious of every pair of eyes on them as they crossed the compound, watching and waiting.

The infirmary was dark after the bright daylight, but LeBeau turned sharply as soon as they crossed the threshold to get them out of the way. Olson and Williams had clearly had the same idea; the first bed on the left was taken. LeBeau guided them to the second, walking around the far side before pausing at the foot of the bed to let Newkirk by. They laid Carter down and crouched down next to him, carefully not looking at Field, standing hidden in the shadows by the door.

Hogan and Kinch came in after nearly a minute, the colonel staggering badly now. Kinch, unaware of the plan, glanced around and headed for the next empty bed. 

Weiss and Klink entered, standing just inside the doorway. “Alright,” said Weiss, and apparently feeling himself safe from the guard towers outside, gestured at them with the pistol. “Corporal, you –”

At which point Field put his own pistol against the man’s head, and pulled the trigger.

Even knowing it was coming Newkirk flinched, ducking down instinctively behind Carter’s bed. Kinch and Hogan dropped to the ground and turned to stare. Klink, suddenly free, stumbled away from Weiss who dropped like a sack of potatoes, and stood staring down at the man. From where he was crouched, Newkirk could only see the Kommandant’s back, but that was enough to know he was shaking with terror.

Field dropped his gun and kicked it away into the shadows a moment before a pair of guards came running in, holding quickly retrieved machine guns, to stare down at the corpse on the ground. 

“Sir?”

“Your Kommandant just disarmed and shot the madman,” managed Hogan, weakly, from his place on the floor. “That was very impressive, Colonel.”

Klink didn’t turn, but straightened slightly. Schultz came lumbering in, and took a step back as soon as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. But Klink had been galvanized into action with, Newkirk had to admit, an impressive grasp of the necessities.

“Stoffer, call the hospital in town and tell them they will be receiving three patients requiring surgery. Reismann, arrange for … for this room to be cleaned,” stammered Klink, unable to quite find the coldness required for the phrase. “Schultz, get a notebook and take statements from the guards and the prisoners. There will be an official report, and possibly an investigation.”

The three guards saluted and hurried out. Klink turned to Field. “Corporal… where did you acquire that pistol?”

“You really gonna ask the man who just saved your life how he broke the rules to do it?” said Hogan in a pained tone as Kinch helped him up to sit on the edge of a bed.

“One of the guards dropped it outside, sir, when he ordered everyone to put down their weapons. I grabbed it when you all went into your office,” answered Field flatly. “I don’t know who,” he added, just as blankly.

Klink nodded slowly. “Very well. I will see to it that no mention of this occurs in my report. In addition, you have my permission to treat any other injured men here, or elsewhere if more convenient.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Field, already stepping around Klink to hurry over to Galbraith.

“I don’t think there’s cause for that,” muttered Klink, looking away. 

Newkirk, applying pressure to Carter’s shoulder again, agreed heartily. 

“I will have the men temporarily restricted to barracks to prevent a panic. Sergeant Kinch, would you assist me?”

The sergeant looked for Hogan’s nod before rising from his CO’s side, and then accompanied the colonel out into the compound. Newkirk noticed he left the door wide open despite the cold – anyone concerned for Hogan’s safety would be able to see him easily. 

“Getting a bit smarter, isn’t ‘e?” murmured Newkirk. 

“If he is, he will take this opportunity to ensure he is not burdened with another aide,” replied LeBeau grimly, helping Hogan to lie back on his bed and propping his feet up. 

“You don’t need to worry about that,” said Hogan. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Newkirk, seeing the colonel’s hard glare at the ceiling, knew that yes, he would indeed. He definitely didn’t regret it. 

END


End file.
